> a bank account that is strongly tied to your identity
Correction: strongly tied to some identity. For online banks, for example, there's not much they can do to check if it's not a stolen identity. You'd need a lot of data - SSN, addresses, driver's license, etc. - but it's not out of the question to obtain such data from dark markets. Of course, withdrawal still be a problem, and this identity package will likely be burned once the first fraud notice will happen, so it may not be worth it to waste it this way.
Yes, I regularly use ACH to send and withdraw funds from my online accounts. That's pretty much how I do all my banking - I almost never set foot in a physical branch unless I need something big like buying a car. Of course, before opening online bank account, they ask me SSN and all kinds of details, but good stolen identity package (e.g. from the same bank that I gave all those kinds of details, or from one of the credit bureaus) would cover that.
That's why you have to freeze your credit, btw. They won't open an account on SSN with frozen credit - you'd have to unfreeze first, and that's usually harder to do for a crook.
Correction: strongly tied to some identity. For online banks, for example, there's not much they can do to check if it's not a stolen identity. You'd need a lot of data - SSN, addresses, driver's license, etc. - but it's not out of the question to obtain such data from dark markets. Of course, withdrawal still be a problem, and this identity package will likely be burned once the first fraud notice will happen, so it may not be worth it to waste it this way.